Earlier this month, a pal e-mailed me a story from the Courier Tribune on the premise that it begged for my commentary. I've not had the time to do it justice.
Summarizing the article, Nicki McDougald, a "program associate" for the Carolina Justice Policy Center was in Asheboro to "educate the community" (in this case, the Asheboro Rotary Club) about "equal justice within the North Carolina Justice System".
But as the article progressively progressed, the astute reader realized that, to Nicki McDougald, the term "equal justice" did not actually mean equal justice. Nope. She "teaches" it as a politically-correct, buzz term that apparently translates into abolishing the death penalty (aka "death penalty reform") for the most heinous crimes committed in North Carolina.
Which, when you get right down to it, for the victims of crimes that merit the ultimate penalty, doesn't mean "equal justice" at all.
I myself am "an eye for an eye" girl. As do a majority of Americans (according to the polls I've seen), I support the death penalty. I believe that there are instances in which the death penalty is not only just but should be demanded by a civilized society.
In my career, I've seen too many horrible things done to innocents by the monsters who walk among us.
I don't care if you're black, white, red, yellow or purple-polka-dotted. If the crime calls for the needle, then the needle should be an option for the state to use. Of course, it's vital, in matters of life and death, that prosecutors shoot straight. And we'll be getting to that shortly.
As I've blogged before, I don't think doctors should be involved in executions. In my view, it is a pansy-assed imposition placed on the "procedure" by legislators-who-have-no-concept-of-the-term-medical-ethics in order to make death appear more palatable or "clean" or (everybody's favorite buzz word), "humane".
The problem with that theory is that the state is taking a life - usually for very ugly reasons. It's not a pretty business. It does harm (as "the patient" always dies). And doctors are sworn to first do no harm.
Indeed, if you're talking about "deterrence", I actually think going back to public firing squads or hangings would be a very good idea ("Look little Johnny, look little Suzy - let this be a lesson that this is what happens to very bad people who do very bad things") . . . it certainly would be no worse than the casual-staged-murder-for-dramatic-license that our kids can see on TV - on shows like "Criminal Minds" or "Bones" - on any given day.
Keeping it real and keeping it ugly keeps society honest.
Alas, on so many levels our uber-civilized society cannot deal with ugly or honest.
I also believe that supporting the death penalty and wanting real reform of the criminal justice system are not mutually exclusive things. Abolishing the death penalty because our justice system has been unfair/corrupt/racist/whatever-the-latest-argument-is in-the-latest-convicted-murder's-appeal assumes that We-The-People cannot make it work.
And I'm sorry, I think that REAL legal reform would demand that (playing on a theme), "YES WE CAN!" make it work - for everybody . . . ESPECIALLY THE VICTIMS.
When you get right down to it, the system actually did work for Darryl Hunt. As mind-numbingly horrible and frightening and inexcusable as his situation was, he was NOT executed. The system has evolved since he was convicted, and safeguards were put into place. I would be the last person in the world to tell the man that he should "get over it", but he's been exonerated - and fiscally compensated (although whatever monetary compensation he got most certainly doesn't begin to make up for the time he he lost) - and is now free to give lectures about how corrupt the legal system in North Carolina really is.
When you've been vindicated, it makes it a whole lot easier to "move on". Indeed, that's kinda the whole point of the justice system.
Those things being said, let's be clear that I'm totally in Hunt's corner that the N.C. justice system been a racist, sexist bastion of good-ole-boyedness for far too long.
Did the system work initially for the young black man falsely accused of raping and murdering a young white woman in Forsyth County? HELL NO. Did it work fast enough when it was clear Hunt had been rail-roaded/scapegoated? HELL NO.
With regards to the argument about processing a death row inmate to execution being so much more expensive than imposing a life sentence, in this era of DNA evidence and CSI investigations, I don't think we'd have innocent people on death row . . . and could actually process the guilty ones much faster . . . if our system were not so currently fundamentally corrupt at the human level . . . in other words, if law enforcement officials (many of them elected and therefore beholden to considerations other than justice) didn't sometimes behave like criminals themselves (and when I say law enforcement, I don't just mean the cops agencies who investigate crimes on the "law" side of the equation, but the district attorneys, judges, Attorneys General, and overseers on the State Bar who are supposed to bring "order" to the proceedings).
The REAL problem (a problem that, as the victim of a series of white-collar crimes, I actually share with Mr. Hunt) seems to be that when the law-school-graduates-wearing-white-hats are caught or called on their own bad behavior, the system moves only very slowly - if at all - to hold them accountable.
And I'm sorry, ladies and gents, saying "Bygones" when someone has stolen years of your life, just doesn't cut it.
If these criminally-negligent public servants are not held accountable, what deterrent exists to stop them/others of their kind from doing it again?
That is how cases demonstrating public corruption become "ancient history" in the eyes of kept men and trust-fund babies. I find considerable irony in that the same local journalists who are writing sympathetically about Darryl Hunt now, no doubt sneered and spit on his pleas for outside eyes - and another look at the evidence - in the past.
Just like they've done me.
These high-minded, enlightened residents of "the fourth estate", who have propped up those who presided over our justice system (or sprang from it) for years . . . the Hunts, the Sleazelys, the Coopers, the Edwardes . . . would have had no problem writing poetically about the light going out of Hunt's eyes when the last of the needles got pushed.
And that brings me back to the irony of anyone bringing a presentation like Ms. McDougald's before the Asheboro Rotary Club . . . one of the last strongholds of Asheboro's "right people" (I, of course, do not qualify) . . . the same people who've determinedly looked in the other direction while some of their kind were held above the law . . . and insulated from its consequences - by others of their kind.
I think it's called "net-working" . . . or "creating connections".
And the sad fact is that whether you're talking about "equal justice" using Nicki McDougald's new-&-improved definition or Dr. Mary Johnson's more traditional notions, Asheboro's fine, upstanding leaders have NEVER been interested in "equal" anything . . . be it in the way they run their Courthouse (i.e. DA's pretending that perjury isn't perjury if the people committing it are local VIP's and prosecuting rape-cases-that-never-should have been prosecuted as rape), or in the way they allow Randolph Hospital to be run (a "non-profit" hospital that, once upon a time, was not interested in marketing their "controlled-affiliate" equally to children on Asheboro's east side - because that "business" was allocated for the Health Department).
They don't play fair.
Now, admittedly, my case is not about a prisoner falsely accused and falsely imprisoned for almost 20 years. But my case IS the "flip side" of that very bad LP . . . as the song I'm singing is about the victim of a series of white-collar crimes screaming at the top of her lungs for justice for going on 13 years . . . and getting no satisfaction from a civil justice system corrupted by perjury . . . and having her very basic civil rights of equal access to the criminal justice system denied for going on eight years (phone calls and letters ignored . . . not even allowed to swear out a criminal complaint) . . . her pleas-for-help to the the N.C. State Bar and N.C. Attorney General repeatedly blown off.
Oh, and I can talk all day long about the flip side of racism too.
Lawyers who lie to their clients, and lawyers suborning perjury - and the perjury itself - do not matter in a Randolph County/North Carolina Courtroom . . . even though North Carolina statute says perjury matters in ANY case, criminal or civil - and that EVERY person caught committing it SHALL be prosecuted as a FELON . . . and even though it is one of the few crimes in North Carolina that does not have a statute of limitations.
The bottom line: Robert Morrison (member of Rotary) and Steven Eblin, carpet-bagging members of Asheboro's new-&-improved good-ole-white-boys-rule-society, could drape themselves in the cloak of public service and steal years of my life and hundreds-of-thousands of dollars of my potential/future income with their lies under Oath (the theory apparently being that the not-so-rich girl who busted her ass for the better part of a decade to become a Pediatrician can just roll over and die) . . . but in Randolph County, as things currently stand, this home-girl has a better chance of getting justice if I were mugged on the street.
At least then, a magistrate with a RCC-high-school-equivalency-diploma would take my complaint and law enforcement would investigate.
(Of course, once past the magistrate, a competent/fair investigation & prosecution by the law grads is not a given. Regular readers know that I was thrown under the bus by the Sheriff/ADA in favor of a cyber-stalker - and not reimbursed by the perpetrator-that-my-friends-tracked down when the mailbox was murdered.)
And so here's my point (and Buzz Armfield, grandson of one of the charter members of the Asheboro Rotary says I've more-than-earned the right to make it). My case is just as relevant - if not more so - to the sad/sorry state of our justice system as Darryl Hunt's. That's because the justice system is, first and foremost, supposed to be about accountability to We-The-People who are the victims of crime.
There is a reason criminal cases are styled as THE PEOPLE of North Carolina versus (insert alleged perpetrator).
So it does kind of pisses me off when people using Darryl Hunt to further their progressive agenda get an invite to "educate" the local Rotary about that is wrong with the criminal justice system, when (1) I (as a "home-girl" and victim of malfeasance on both the civil and criminal sides of the Courthouse) cannot get past their front door, and (2) one of the unconvicted felons in my case gets his "quintuple happys" nobbing with the hobs of Asheboro.
The mill-town bullshit just gets old.
I know plenty about what is wrong with the justice system. I could tell them that the SBI is corrupt and useless too - but for different reasons.
And I can talk all day long about how the legal big guns in Raleigh would have everyone believe that the problems are minor, and that the state of the state's justice system is fine, thank you very much. The way that Roy Cooper "handled" the Nifong debacle (after Nifong was suckered into handing it to him) PROVES that things are just hunky-dory.
Move on along. Nothing more to see.
Except when there is. One of the legal players in my case . . . Randolph County Assistant District Attorney King Dozier . . . the officer-of-the-Court who (1) used me as a patsy in the aforelinked rape-case-that-wasn't, and (2) told me that my case would be referred to the SBI for proper investigation, but neglected to tell me that his boss had killed the investigation before it could start (telling the SBI he would not prosecute the case even if they found evidence of wrong-doing - IGNORING a victim of crime is totally "discretionary" you see) . . . is a prime LOCAL example of what is wrong with our system.
In a case back in 2001, Dozier (I'm quoting from a N.C. State Bar disciplinary notice) "failed to disclose to defense counsel the existence of arrangements with co-defendants to dismiss charges in exchange for their testimony against another criminal defendant. He also failed to take remedial measures when one of the co-defendants testified, in essence, that there was no arrangement".
In short, an Asheboro ADA LIED to the Court and the Judge. But his "discipline" by the N.C. State Bar amounted to barely a slap on the hand: His law license was "suspended" for two years. But the suspension was "stayed" and he kept his job as a prosecutor working for Garland Yates.
(OBTW, you cannot find that particular news story on the Courier Tribune's website anymore. The paywall went up and old embarrassing stories came down. Par for the course for Ray Criscoe & company - no matter what Annette Jordan says).
So there's really no wonder why two "non-profit" hospital executives lying their asses off in a civil case in order to save themselves and their two-bit/third-rate hospital a wad of money does not matter to good-ole-Garland. Like Harold Brubaker, he has to "live in this town". And in Rotarian terms, that means kissing the right incestuously-incestuous butts - legal (or any other kind of) ethics be damned.
With a respectable portion of the prisoners currently on North Carolina's death row hailing from Garland Yates' jurisdiction, THIS ladies and gentlemen, is the quality of justice in Randolph County.
LIARS RULE.
And/so I'm resting my case that the quality of legal oversight of the system that sent these people to walk the green mile ranks right up there with the quality of medical oversight at Randolph Hospital and in North Carolina . . . the same kind "oversight" that allows doctors to be fired for saving lives or sued for telling the truth or swindled by liars who treated the Court with contempt by lying repeatedly under Oath.
In Rotarian terms, what was done to me by the legal system to cover the lying tail of a very prominent Asheboro Rotarian . . .
. . . was not about the truth . . .
. . . it was not fair . . .
. . . it did not foster goodwill or friendship . . .
. . . and it was not, ultimately, beneficial . . . except to those who lied and cheated their way to $700,000/year salaries.
As I read the Courier's article, I really had to wonder how many of the players in the conspiracy-of-dunces that orchestrated my sad saga (Morrison, Eblin, Yates, Gregson, Dozier, Schmidly, Renfro, Criscoe, Brubaker, Howard Coble's staffers, et.al) are now or once were members of the high-minded Asheboro Rotary . . . and if they were at this particular presentation . . . and if they were not squirming in their seats?
Because they know for damned-sure know that "equal justice" does not exist in Randolph County . . .
. . . and deep down, they don't really want it to darken their clubhouse door!
I'm surprised Nicki McDougald got past it.
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